Animal Crossing: New Horizons – How to Get Bushes and How to Plant Them

What to do with bushes and shrubs

With Nature Day on the way in April 2020, there’s a new type of plant being added to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Bushes are here and they reshape the landscape in a few different ways. How you put them to use is up to you, but to do that you need to know a few of the nitty gritty details. Used well you can create some really interesting new shapes and layouts on your island. However, they’ll be sort of rare to begin with, as players start to add them to their inventory and island. Here’s how to get bushes and how to plant them in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

How to Get Bushes

Bushes will be added as part of the free late April update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. To start getting them you need to make sure you’re always fully updated, so see how to update your game. Once you receive the update getting bushes is pretty simple. However, it relies on a random visitor coming to your island. This shouldn’t be a problem with Nature Day on the horizon, but we’ll stick to the usual way for this guide since that event is temporary. See our separate Nature Day guide for more on that specific event, once it is available.

Bushes will arrive on your island via Leif’s Garden Shop, which is more of a small kiosk at this point (many expect these to have their own fully built shops in future updates). Leif will come to your island on random days, just like all the other visitors, such as Savannah or C.J. When he’s in town he’ll set up his shop in the main square, so just check here every day and wait for him to arrive. Once he’s there you can buy a selection of bushes from him, which can then be planted all around your island.

How to Plant Bushes and How to Use Shrubs

Bushes come in the form of bush shrubs of different varieties. So far we’ve seen azaleas and tea-olives both of which come in different colors. Expect to see more once the full update arrives though. Once you buy a bush from Leif you can plant it anywhere, just like any other plant in the game. Just find the open spot you want the bush to grow in and open your inventory, then select it and choose “plant”. The bush will pop up right in front of you and will act much like a wall. You can’t walk through a bush shrub like you can flowers, so be more careful with where you plant them. There’s still a few questions left to answer though. Can you breed them to create more? Almost certainly, but we’ll have to wait a few more days for everyone to get them and test it all out.

So that’s how to get bushes and how to plant them in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Be sure to check back all through the coming months as this big new update gets explored.